Not Waving, But Drowning
by Overnighter
Summary: Ryan doesn't go to Berkeley Summer doesn't go to Brown. In the aftermath of Marissa's death, though, they all have to find a way to move on. A postfinale fic, based on a challenge by Brandywine421. Complete.


Ryan doesn't go to Berkeley -- at least, not yet. Summer doesn't go to Brown.

Instead, three days after their high school graduation, they go to a funeral, on a hill overlooking the cliffs that claimed the first of their class to die. It's hot, in the chapel on the hill where Julie and Caleb married, where they buried him when he died, but Ryan is ice-cold.

They crowd in -- the place is crammed with Harbor students and Kaitlin's boarding-school friends, Newpsies, senior and junior, and most of the staff of HOAG. Former clients of the dating service, former Newport Group employees -- everyone knows the death of a teenager is a tragedy.

They're all mixed up -- family and not. Julie is sandwiched between Dr. Roberts and Jimmy in the first row -- looking dazed and chic and utterly empty in her basic black sheath. She doesn't cry; she doesn't do anything at all, except stare blankly into space somewhere above the sleek, silver coffin laid out on the altar.

Jimmy holds her elbow, holds her up -- he's become an an old man overnight. His blond curls have faded to grey, and the lines around his eyes and mouth have deepened almost to craters.

Kaitlin clings to Dr. Roberts, sobbing enough for them all, and there's a kid beside her, faintly helpless, looking lost in a borrowed, oversized sport coat -- Ryan thinks he might be her boyfriend -- as Dr. Roberts keeps sneaking glances back at his own daughter in the row behind.

Summer stands between them -- Seth and Ryan -- her hip against Ryan's, her hand in Seth's pocket. She doesn't fall apart; she doesn't scream and cry. She shut down entirely, and even Ryan is impressed with how far down she can push her own emotions.

Luke is crowded in beside Seth, with Anna squeezed in at the end; his parents -- both of them -- and his brothers are right behind him, with Sandy and Kirsten and people Ryan knows he should recognize, but doesn't. To his surprise, Theresa stands beside him; she had slipped in silently past Taylor and Sung-ho before the service started; Later, Ryan will learn that Eva and Daniel had stood at the back the whole time, along with a crowd of Newport Union students he didn't know.

He's not thinking about that now -- about how Taylor and her mother had organized everything -- called people, ordered food and booze and cars -- he wasn't thinking about how Taylor was there, and not in Korea, at all.

He doesn't think about much of anything since that night -- when his brain turns on, so do his memories -- except that he isn't going to Berkeley, isn't leaving the pool house to spread his contagion -- his cursed existence -- to the scary world. Ever again.

He's waiting for people to blame him -- for people to be angry. Instead, Julie kisses him, and tells him she knows he's always loved her daughter; that he'd tried to save her to the end.

His mother sobs into the phone and asks if he's hurt and tells him not to worry about the car -- not at all. She sends flowers to the funeral, and a few days later, a gentle, gruff-voiced stranger asks him, over the phone, if it it's "too soon" for him to want another ride. That's how he meets Ron.

Sandy and Kirsten feed him and hug him and fend off the scores of well-wishers and well-meaning mourners and allow him to make the pool house a cocoon of grief for Seth and Summer and him. They call Berkeley and defer his acceptance for a semester; they have Dr. Roberts do the same for Summer at Brown.

Ryan doesn't go to Berkeley; Summer doesn't go to Brown. Instead, ten days after they bury Marissa, they find themselves standing, slightly bewildered, on the sloping deck of a sailing yacht dock on the edge of a tropical paradise.

Ryan's not sure how it happened -- they all traveled in a big pack -- Cohens and Roberts and leftover Coopers and then some -- from the house to the airport, from the airport to this beach.

Jimmy's there -- still looking like an old man, but with some bounce back in his step -- and he's herding them -- Seth and Summer and Ryan and somehow, Taylor and Sung-ho -- and their luggage -- and saying things that make no sense. Not to Ryan, at least. Seth is nodding, eyes aglow for the first time since graduation.

Julie and Kaitlin and Neil, Sandy and Kirsten -- he's leaving them all behind to sail an ocean away, to see Tahiti and Australia and the Mediterranean, and places he didn't know existed three years ago. It's not better than Berkeley, but it's better than Berkeley this semester, better than cold, far-off Brown.

The first night, Seth and Summer are snuggled away on a side deck somewhere, and the rich, elderly couple Jimmy crews for are raising their eyebrows at the enthusiastic noises coming from the cabin that Taylor and Sung-ho have claimed for their own.

He's standing beside Jimmy on the bridge, and for a moment, he's so lonely he can almost feel the physical ache, but then he sees Jimmy roll his eyes, and blush, and the two of them break up laughing -- laugh and laugh as though they'd never laughed before. It gets a little hysterical near the end, but the Willamettes -- which is what the elderly couple are called -- are kind, and quietly disappear as Ryan and Jimmy dissolve into tears in each other's arms.

After that, it gets easier. Ryan doesn't know anything about sailing, and Seth and Summer don't know anything about hard work, but Sung-ho's worked all his life, and Taylor -- of course -- knows a little bit of everything. They're busy all the time, and the Willamettes are patient with them and it only takes a little while for them to find a rhythm they can all work with.

The sailboat has a motor, but they hardly ever use it, and Ryan finds himself drawn night after night to the boat's bow, watching the keel break the waves gently. Sometimes he sees a night bird; sometime dolphins or sharks or leaping fish he can't identify. Sometimes he has a companion; sometimes, his only companion is his grief.

By the time they cross the Pacific, and land in their first port of call, they're working as a unit. He's not part of a couple, but they never make him feel like a fifth wheel, and they form and re-form clusters, even on land, almost on a whim -- who wants ice cream; who knows how to play rummy; who needs to find an Internet cafe.

They dock on an island Ryan's never heard of, and cocoa-skinned girls whisper endearments to him in a language he thinks is French. But he drops his head and watches his sockless feet, until Jimmy takes him out one night and gets him plastered.

When he's too drunk to remember which direction to storm off in, Jimmy tells him -- in the most polite, Newport way -- that he needs to get laid. His daughter is dead, and Ryan is eighteen, and he wasn't even dating her when she died. Ryan thinks about hitting him, but he can't make his legs stand up under him, and in the end, they have to call a taxi to take them both back to the ship.

The next day, he smiles at an island girl, and carries her basket to her front door. She gives him a kiss on the cheek, and a fruit he can't identify, and when he returns to the yacht, they're all -- even the Willamettes -- massed around the railing, smiling, as they pretend to polish the brass.

It takes him seven more ports of call before he finally takes a girl to bed, but he figures it must be the thought that counts, because everyone leaves him alone.

When they get closer to the Mediterranean, they start to get visitors at every port of call. Sandy and Kirsten. Julie and Neil. Kaitlin and Julie. Neil and Sandy. Luke and his brothers. Ryan's sure they've got it all planned out until Hailey and Julie show up on the same day, and Jimmy won't let him leave the ship for a week unless one of the Willamettes stays behind instead.

At every port, now, after they find an Internet cafe, they find an English-language bookstore, and a stationer's. They all read voraciously, trading incestuously on the long days at sea with little else to do. Ryan learns he likes Marie Claire better than Cosmo, and that he's a winter. Seth and Taylor have fits over the manga available all over Asia; Sung-ho likes Russian novels. Jimmy reads mysteries as fast as he can get through them, and Summer likes history books as long as they talk about the clothes, too.

They all fill up notebooks and sketch books and notepads with all the things they can't say and don't say and try to crowd out of their heads with their busy, busy reading, but even though they take up a whole cabinet now in his tiny cabin, Ryan won't send any of them home with their visitors. He likes to be alone with his words, sometimes, and the half-formed sketches of the places they've been.

In Greece, on Mykonos, Sandy and Kirsten are standing with a couple he doesn't recognize, waving madly at the docking yacht. It's Dawn and her boyfriend, and she looks halfway afraid he'll tell her to go.

Kirsten whispers "sorry for the surprise" in his ear, but she doesn't really mean it. She thinks he needs to see his mother -- or Dawn needs to see him -- and she's right. They have a nice time -- wandering the small towns and villages, eating exotic foods and touring small churches.

Ron is quiet, but kind -- to Dawn and to Ryan -- and it's windy the day the go to lay out on the rocky beach, so Ryan and his mother can both keep their shirts on, not exposing their matching, silvery scars from a belt's buckle, from a lifetime ago.

In Italy, Kirsten and Sandy are waiting again, this time with Julie and Kaitlin. All the women look pale to him by now, and he realizes how long he's been on the yacht. It's cooler on land than on the sea for a change, and Julie whisks Taylor and Summer and Kaitlin away for shopping in Milan and Rome.

Kirsten refuses to let him accompany the rest of the men on their quest for the world's best _gelateria_, and he finds himself on a train to Rome.

They stay in a hotel that looks like a black-and-white movie, and there's so much space in their suite that Ryan feels faintly breathless. They wander the streets arm in arm, and even though it's obvious that Kirsten's older than he, she draws comments and catcalls and approving looks all up and down the Via Dei Condotti. Half of the men seem to think she's his mother, and half his lover and he can't decide which tickles him more.

He sleeps that night on crisp white sheets on a soft bed that won't stop rocking, and when Kirsten wakes him before dawn, he wants to complain, but bites his tongue instead.

He doesn't know how many strings she's pulled, but they end up standing at the gates of the Vatican in the grey morning light, shivering slightly, and waiting for an imposing man in a scarlet skullcap to open the gates. He looks like a picture from a medieval portrait, but he's got a familiar California accent -- the friend of a friend. He takes them into every nook and cranny of the vast, wide halls and tiny chapels; they wander for hours before the tourists even begin to line up outside. He protests that everyone is missing this, but Kirsten just smiles and touches his cheek, and whispers, "This is for us, alone."

In a belltower, with the ancient city spread before them, and the morning sun warming clay roofs to a rosy fire, Ryan feels a stab of grief so acute it doubles him over in physical pain. His hands on the marble ledge are white-knuckled, and his breath is coming in shallow pants. Kirsten sees his distress, and puts her hands over one of his, asking an unspoken question.

"Trey would love this," he blurts, and that's not what he means at all. Except it is.

Kirsten seems to understand, and she catches him as he finally falls apart, wrapping herself around him and pulling him to the ground, into her lap, letting him sob out a lifetime of pain and hurt and loss and anger and fear. When he re-emerges, who knows how long later, Kirsten's priest friend has discreetly withdrawn, and when he walks down beside her on shaky legs, the kind man has brought a cold, wet towel and a pitcher of water for them both to recover in private.

As they make their way to back to the edge of St. Peter's Square, their escort nods meaningfully to a tiny chapel tucked away amongst the columns.

"Perhaps," he says, "A moment to compose yourself? To light a candle for those you mourn?"

Ryan steps through the low doorway, blinking as his eyes adjust to the gloom. It's a private area -- not open to tourists -- and a row of half-guttered candles glow in ancient iron racks behind the dark, rough-hewn pews. He's not even sure what saint the chapel honors, or to whom he's supposed to send his petitions as Eva once taught him, but he bends to the threadbare velvet kneeler all the same.

If he lit a candle for all the lost souls in his life, he'd burn the church to the ground. Instead, he whispers a prayer for a lost girl who left a world of grief behind her, and turns to go.

As they stand behind the gates at what appears to be the service entrance, watching streams of civil servants and religious in their many different habits and robes, Ryan realizes that there was no offering box inside the chapel. As Kirsten thanks their guide, he empties his wallet absently, tucking money into the various pockets of his clothes. He adds his wallet and passport to Kirsten's tiny, designer bag and instructs her to keep it tucked under her jacket, under her shoulder. When they emerge again on the tourist-clogged Via del Corso, after a few minutes' walk, he's been picked clean by swarms of gypsy children -- an offering of his own. He wonders if any of them will ever get a chance to see the world beyond the few city blocks they now inhabit.

He doesn't realize that he's planning to go back to California until they leave the Cohens and the Cooper girls behind once more. Summer and Taylor are showing off their new purchases to a fascinated Mrs. Willamette, and Jimmy and her husband are discussing plans. The Willamettes want to winter in Europe, and have Jimmy meet them again in the spring. It's only when Jimmy asks about schedules and spring break that he remembers about Berkeley at all.

They leave the Willamettes behind sometime after they share an improvised Thanksgiving at sea. They help Jimmy to steer the yacht back to warmer waters for the winter, but he won't cross the Pacific again. This time, they're business-like, focused on a goal. They stop only briefly for fuel and supplies -- they have to run the motor more now in the cold, dead European seas -- and they rarely leave the yacht except for supply runs.

They fly home, on more and tinier planes then Ryan has ever experienced before, before switching to a jet in Honolulu.

On the plane home they make an attempt to divide their lives for the first time in months -- to figure out what belongs to whom, and which gifts go to what family. Summer and Seth bend their heads over print outs of real-estate listings in Providence, and Taylor shyly asks if he wants to share a place with her in Berkeley; after six months together, the Sorbonne is too far from CalTech and Sung-ho.

They arrive in Newport Beach three days before Christmas, the weather as warm and inviting as ever. They each feel a tear of grief again at their looming separation, but when they step into the airport, their families are waiting en masse. Ryan feels something deep in his gut he thinks might be equal parts happiness and relief. And then he sees her, in the corner of his right. To the left of her sister, partially blocked by Sandy's welcome home sign. He freezes, unsure if the last months have all been a dream.

After a moment, he feels Summer beside him, even her shorter nails digging into his skin.

"You see her too, Atwood, right?" she whispers. They're alone on the jetway; Seth and Taylor and Sung-ho have all moved ahead. He nods, afraid to speak, but when he looks again, she's gone. He hears Summer sigh beside him, and knows she's gone for her, too.

"Maybe, maybe she needed to say goodbye, too," Summer says, and it seems as reasonable an explanation as he's likely to get. He nods again, and her grip on him relaxes into something closer to a hug. They leave the jetway together, and are enveloped by a massive swarm of love. He thinks, just for a moment, he feels her touch his arm one last time, and he can tell by the look on Summer's face that she felt it, too.

Three weeks after they return, he meets Taylor and her mother outside the slightly funky apartment building not too far from campus. Kirsten is -- at his insistence -- in Providence with Seth and Summer, but she'd helped him shop, and pack, and her presence is in every box he hauls into their rather dim living room. It takes the better part of a day to get everything situated, and by dinner time Sandy and Veronica are eager to spend some time apart.

Ryan and Sandy walk to a restaurant on the edge of campus -- one of the Cohens' old haunts. Sandy is thrilled to be back, telling him a story for every street corner. Before they part after dinner -- Ryan back to the apartment, and Sandy to his hotel -- he surprises Ryan with a fierce, tight hug.

"Oh, kid. You have no idea how proud I am," he says, and Ryan can hear the tears in his voice. "You belong here. You deserve this. Remember that."

Before he can answer, Sandy kisses his forehead. He's an affectionate man -- he'd be more so, if Ryan would let him -- but he's never done that before. Not to Ryan. It's a gesture, Ryan realizes. A blessing.

"We love you," Sandy whispers in his ear, and lets him go. He walks off into the darkness, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Ryan -- as much as he wants to -- can't say it back. He can't speak.

By the time he returns to the apartment, he's gotten himself back under control, and the small stab of homesickness he feels dwindles when he sees the warm, yellow lights spilling out of their second-story window.

When he enters, the last of the boxes are gone. Taylor and her mother have decorated the living room the men's absence. For a moment, he's puzzled by the massive display above the couch, and then he recognizes the frames. It's his Chrismukkah gift from Kirsten -- he and Seth each had gotten one -- a box filled with albums and frames and photographs of all stages of his life. When he'd unpacked it this afternoon, he'd shoved it in a corner when Sandy wasn't looking.

"I hope it's okay," Taylor says nervously, and he realizes that she's hovering in the doorway of the kitchenette. "It seemed a shame to leave them all boxed up. I thought -- I thought it might be nice, you know, to have family around."

He approaches the wall. The frames are uniform in color, but all shapes and sizes. The layout is elegant without being fussy; he and Taylor will make good roommates.

There's an old Polaroid of the Atwoods in happier days, and one of him and Trey from Trey's twenty-first birthday. There's Theresa's Christmas card picture of Daniel, and the Cohen's first Chrismukkah card with Ryan on it. There are pictures of Taylor's family mingled in and there are photos of all of them, in various combinations, from all around the world, including one of his rapt face in the belltower high above St. Peter's Square, moments before he'd fallen apart. He hadn't even known Kirsten had snapped that shot.

And in the center, a picture of them all taken in haste on graduation day. He was smiling widely -- he couldn't stop smiling that day -- looking over at Summer and Seth, who were turned towards each other, teasing. Taylor was half out of the shot, turned and talking to someone behind her, and he could see half of Sandy's arm behind him. Only Marissa was staring straight ahead at the camera, smiling, her head tilted slightly down to minimize the sun glare, as Julie had taught both her daughters. He feels his breath catch.

"It was the best one of Marissa," Taylor apologizes, but he's shaking his head, laughing and almost crying at the same time.

"She always did take the best pictures," he says, and Taylor embraces him, tears running down her face. They sit on their new couch, listening to the faint sounds of the street outside, and he feels the weight of the love encompassed above them. For the first time, though, he feels not its burden, but its comfort. He wants to tell Marissa that it was her death that gave him this family -- a crazy quilt of friends and parents and strangers all knit together at last -- he wants to thank her somehow. He likes to think she's happy. He likes to think she knows.


End file.
